Men Of The Year 2006

Where does the energy come from? His kick-ass thriller Inside Man hit theaters in March. His great and unbearably visceral documentary When the Levees Broke—which Americans will be using one and two hundred years from now to comprehend the storm of wind, water, and incompetence that killed one of their great cities—hit HBO in late August, on Katrina’s first anniversary. Levees is his twentieth film in twenty years. It’s also his most heartbreaking and maddening. Since this is Spike Lee we’re talking about, that’s saying something.

Coat, Polo by Ralph Lauren. T-shirt by Marc Ecko Cut & Sew.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Andrew Corsello

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Andrew Corsello

Spike Lee

visionary

On second glance, Inside Man also compels the kind of reckoning Do the Right Thing did, because beneath the surface of the action it’s all there: the ethnic and racial frictions, the civil rights infractions, the specter of reparations (not to mention the most exalted use of the C-word in movie history). And all of it done with those careening second-person visuals—pure cinematic energy!—that make you feel less like a spectator than someone Lee’s lured into a rambunctious argument. Don’t feel like arguing? Too bad. Now, more than ever, when it comes to Spike Lee, indifference is not an option.

If you kidnapped Thom Browne from his home in New York City and plunked him down outside a convenience store in Kentucky, people would assume that he had escaped from the local mental-health facility. His personal style is so codified and perversely conservative that it would definitely freak out the locals: With his high-waisted flat-front pants, shrunken jackets, massive wingtips, and oversize cuffs exposing inches of ankle and hairy leg, Thom manages to simultaneously obey and break every menswear convention.

Suit, shirt, and tie by Thom Browne New York.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Simon Doonan

Thom Browne

style czar

When I see Thom all Thom’d up and sitting in a restaurant or walking down the street, I often think, That’s either Thom Browne or a very stylish and handsome Jehovah’s Witness. Thom is, in many ways, both. He creates and proselytizes the Browne look with a missionary zeal. The courageous exaggerations of the Browne style—the polar opposite of the floppy, denimy, bohemian look that dominates menswear today—have made him the most important menswear name to come along in years.

Suit, shirt, and tie by Thom Browne New York.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: As told to David Gargill

Carson Palmer

NFL star | medical miracle

“The day I got hurt [January 8], I was fired up, because the Bengals hadn’t been in the playoffs for fifteen years, and we thought we had a good chance to beat the Steelers. It was just a normal play: I dropped back and threw the ball, and I could sense something, like a flash out of the corner of my eye, and it was too late to move… I realized I had eight months of torture, eight months of rehab… In August I started our third preseason game against Green Bay. Scoring on a long drive showed me I was back. Beating the Steelers in week three was big, and I’m looking forward to meeting them again December 31."

Number of humanitarian organizations he’s been involved with since his NBA career began: 8 (including CARE, UNICEF, the Special Olympics, Basketball Without Borders, and Mutombo’s own foundation)

Polio vaccinations given in Congo since 1999 due in part to Mutombo’s public-service efforts: 8.2 million

Money personally contributed to found a state-of-the-art hospital in Congo: $15 million

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: John Gillies

Dikembe Mutombo

Houston Rockets center | humanitarian

1997: Creates the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of his countrymen in Congo, where the average life expectancy is 51 years and one in five children don’t see their fifth birthday.

2001: Leads the Philadelphia 76ers to the NBA finals. Later that year in Kinshasa, Mutombo breaks ground on his dream project, a 300-bed hospital named after his mother. The facility will be the first of its kind built in Congo in over forty years.

2001-2006: Redoubles efforts to raise the $29 million needed to fund the construction of the hospital.

2007: Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital opens.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Alex Pappademas

Ryan Gosling

phenom

In 2004’s gooey period romance The Notebook, Ryan Gosling played a ruggedly handsome young man who grows a Kris Kristofferson beard and makes sweet PG-13 love to future real-life girlfriend Rachel McAdams. From then on, he was recognized as one of the greatest actors of our time—by 15-year-old girls. This year, everybody else figured it out. In Half Nelson, Gosling plays a charming, crack-addicted middle-school teacher tap-dancing through his fiasco of a life. It’s a revelatory performance that recalls the hangdog, hapless, boldly undershaven leading men of the ’70s. Your Dustin Hoffmans, your Elliott Goulds—actors who understood that even good men are ultimately the sum of their flaws.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Alex Pappademas

Ryan Gosling

phenom

“I’m attracted to movies that seem like they’re about real people,“ Gosling says. “People that don’t feel appropriately, who don’t cry when they’re supposed to and don’t always have some kind of clever retort to an insult, y’know? Or some kind of great perspective on what it all means. People don’t just act a certain way. We’re messier than that.“

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert

attack dog

THE 5 BIGGEST STORIES THE MEDIA MISSED IN 2006

by Stephen Colbert

1. DICK CHENEY HAS MANY FRIENDS HE DIDN’T SHOOT.

Experts estimate there are several dozen close friends the vice president did not shoot in the face in 2006. But you wouldn’t know it from watching Keith Olbermann.

One day after calling President Bush “the Devil“ in front of the entire United Nations, Hugo Chavez was long gone from New York—and so was every single Q-tip that had been in his hotel bathroom. Also missing: shower cap, body lotion, $8 can of Sprite. Not one single journalist covered this story other than Fox News’s John Gibson.

3. PRESIDENT BUSH HOLDS DIRECT TALKS WITH SOUTH KOREA.

This is really good practice in case he ever talks to the North Koreans. I mean, who can tell those guys apart?

Blazer, cardigan, and pants by Brooks Brothers. Shirt by Lands’ End. Tie by J.Crew. Shoes and socks by Ralph Lauren.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert

attack dog

**4. DAVID BLAINE ESCAPES FROM A HYATT REGENCY ELEVATOR. **

He was trapped four floors above the ground, in full view of an entire lobby full of people, for a full six minutes while they reset the circuit breaker. Where was The New York Times? Where was The Abraca-Daily?

5. “BUY ONE FROZEN HAM, GET A SECOND FOR HALF PRICE“ WEEK AT SENTRY SUPERMARKET IN WAUKESHA, WISCONSIN.

I challenge all “objective journalists“ claiming not to have an eastern-liberal slant: Show me your coverage of this outstanding value.

In The Last King of Scotland, Forest Whitaker has the brilliance to play Ugandan despot Idi Amin the way Amin saw himself—jolly, bighearted, inspired, irresistible—and that’s why the performance is so frightening. …Whitaker is never simply a monster—or simply a clown, either, even in his fancy uniforms and preposterous Highlander outfits. We see the ability to make his infections the delusions that brought him to power in the first place, along with the eerily shrewd alertness to other people’s weak spots that never deserts him, whether he’s exploding with bonhomie or murderous paranoia.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Tom Carson

Forest Whitaker

strongman

What’s most mesmerizing about Whitaker’s performance in The Last King is that it works on so many levels of physical detail and quicksilver insight without looking any more planned than Amin’s own behavior was; in other words, you never catch Whitaker acting—you just believe he’s Idi Amin. But the scariest part of his empathetic genius is that he leaves you wondering if you could have been, too.

Coat by Kenneth Cole New York. Shirt by Dolce & Gabbana.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Devin Friedman

Jackass’ cast

hell-raisers

Nothing galvanizes critics like a Jackass movie. Film yourself in a fart mask (space helmet + beer bong) and suddenly John Tierney’s writing op-eds in the Times. This fall it seemed very important to decide what it meant that Jackass: Number Two was the most popular film at the box office—as if it meant we’re idiots, or closeted homosexuals, or enslaved by a bizarre version of masculinity. None of these can be ruled out. “There are no girls,“ Bam Margera says, discussing the masculinity question, “because we don’t want girls to get hurt. Or to have dicks branded on their ass, like I did.“

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Devin Friedman

Jackass’ cast

hell-raisers

Number Two was more tweaked than the original, seemed more like straight masochism, verged closer to snuff. Steve-O’s grin at certain times (the butt-chug bit, for instance) took on the look of a scary clown’s—maybe because the gang had no choice but to take things a little further in this sequel.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Devin Friedman

Jackass’ cast

hell-raisers

“You get a bunch of guys trying to one-up each other in front of an audience, it gets pretty crazy,“ Margera says. Like in the photo shoot pictured here, which devolved quickly into whiskey drinking, testicle punching, vomiting, and one near fatality…

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Devin Friedman

Jackass’ cast

hell-raisers

…Johnny Knoxville, having brought the party with him in the form of a samurai sword, accidentally stabbed Steve-O in the back. “Most people would have been pissed,“ says Knoxville. “But Steve-O was on his eighth box of whip-its by then. I sent him roses in the hospital with a card that said, I’d only stab you physically, not figuratively.’ “ And with that, maybe we have the Jackass motto of manhood.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: interview by Lisa DePaulo

Al Gore

movie star

**So, did you ever think your movie would be this successful? **

Noooooo. You know, I hoped it would be. But I had questions about whether it would really be possible to turn a slide show into a movie.

**And a slide show by Al Gore! Isn’t it interesting how, throughout the 2000 campaign, the media beat you up, calling you wooden and robotic and all that, but somehow you had the charisma to carry a movie? **

[laughs] Well, I have always had close friends say, during those political years, “Why don’t they see you the way we see you?“

Shirt by Prada. Watch by Rolex.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: interview by Lisa DePaulo

Al Gore

movie star

**So if you decide to run, do you think we would see the Al Gore from the movie? Or the Al Gore from 2000? **

Well, I don’t plan to run. I don’t plan to run. And I don’t expect to run.

**How many times a day does somebody ask you this? **

Well, I’m doing a lot of interviews and it’s on the list of questions. For every one of them. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that people think enough of me still in that world to ask that question. It’s true that I haven’t, uh, gotten to the point where I am willing to completely rule it out for all time. But… I’m not making plans to run again.

**But you’re not ruling it out? **

Uh… no. [smiles]

Shirt by Prada. Watch by Rolex.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Marshall Sella

Ben Affleck

comeback

The Gigli curse is finished for good. Not long ago, Ben Affleck was regarded by his detractors as little more than celebrity-magazine fodder—more famous for being half a hybrid name than an actor. And then he went away for a while. Or at least we thought he did. Affleck is good-humored about the notion that he’s had to manage some sort of comeback. Rather than disappearing to lick his wounds, Affleck spent his time writing and directing the 2007 release Gone, Baby, Gone—and then he turned in one of the most surprising performances of the year: his haunting portrayal of actor George Reeves in Hollywoodland.

T-shirt by Calvin Klein Underwear. Jeans by Earnest Sewn.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Chris Heath

The Raconteurs

guitar heroes

So rarely does it work: a musician who has found magic in one place managing to cast a different but simultaneous set of spells elsewhere. This time it did, and the Raconteurs, declining their destiny as a sidenote in the Jack White story, were as fine and as free as rock got in 2006. Their Broken Boy Soldiers album offered the initial template, but as the Benson-Keeler-Lawrence-White road show girdled the globe, these songs mutated at an unnatural rate, often augmented by unexpected and wonderfully overwrought cover versions—on a typical night Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,“ say, or Nancy Sinatra’s version of “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).“

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Chris Heath

The Raconteurs

guitar heroes

For his part, Jack White refused to be pinned down from the very beginning, and when faced with the assumption that this was just a one-off dilettante flourish, he would declare that the Raconteurs might last for the rest of his life. “It’s completely unclear,“ he said. “I like it that way.“

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Alex Pappademas

Lupe Fiasco

breakout

“In high school, I was the cool nerd,“ says the hip-hop sensation Lupe Fiasco, whose album Food & Liquor was one of 2006’s best surprises.

Photo: Terry Richardson; Text: Alex Pappademas

Lupe Fiasco

breakout

“I was from the hood, so I could relate to the gangstas. But I also talked about The Simpsons and comic books and rock ’n’ roll. So the nerdy, skateboarder, art-buff, toy-collecting type thing—that’s not an image. That’s me. And when people hear me just talking, they’re like, He’s honest.’ “

First, let’s get something straight: Mark’s smart. He was ahead of the curve on HDTV and all that other stuff. I think one of the reasons the NBA was on his ass is that it’s like, “Man, this guy’s smarter—he thought about something before we did.“ I truly believe that… You can’t accomplish what Mark’s accomplished in life without having your act together. He’s from the computer world, he became successful in basketball, and his movie [Good Night, and Good Luck] got nominated for six Academy Awards. This guy’s been good at a lot of shit.